926
Thomas, J., dissenting
districts" violate the Qualifications Clauses even if it were to survive scrutiny under the Fourteenth Amendment? Cf. Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 649 (1993) ("[W]e express no view as to whether [the intentional creation of such districts] always gives rise to an equal protection claim"); id., at 677 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (arguing that States may draw district lines for the "sole purpose" of helping blacks or members of certain other groups win election to Congress). More generally, if "[d]istrict lines are rarely neutral phenomena" and if "districting inevitably has and is intended to have substantial political consequences," Gaffney v. Cummings, 412 U. S. 735, 753 (1973), will plausible Qualifications Clause challenges greet virtually every redistricting decision? Cf. id., at 754 (noting our general refusal to use the Equal Protection Clause to "attemp[t] the impossible task of extirpating politics from what are the essentially political processes of the sovereign States"); see also Burns v. Richardson, 384 U. S. 73, 89, n. 16 (1966) (finding nothing invidious in the practice of drawing district lines in a way that helps current incumbents by avoiding contests between them).
The majority's opinion may not go so far, although it does not itself suggest any principled stopping point. No matter how narrowly construed, however, today's decision reads the Qualifications Clauses to impose substantial implicit prohibitions on the States and the people of the States. I would not draw such an expansive negative inference from the fact that the Constitution requires Members of Congress to be a certain age, to be inhabitants of the States that they represent, and to have been United States citizens for a specified period. Rather, I would read the Qualifications Clauses to do no more than what they say. I respectfully dissent.
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